17 June 2009

Cake fail

Now that our cake-maker extraordinaire has left the building, life is just a little less sweet. In our desolation we recently resorted to a recipe from the internets, cooked in the office microwave: 5-MINUTE CHOCOLATE CAKE, otherwise known as MICROWAVE MUG CAKE.

Dear readers, we have girded our loins to share the results with you.

It took the biggest mug in the office, the mighty Kwik Kopy 350mL, to accommodate all the ingredients. We watched through the microwave glass, feeling anxious about overflowage, despite the precautionary folded A4 sheet (recycled).


But it didn’t overflow, because we all held our breaths for three minutes (taking turns). It came out, looking promisingly shiny and risen and crusty on top, like a self-saucing pudding.

It had to be coaxed out, but eventually it confronted us in all its... *ahem*... glory.


We tried, o how we tried, to dress it up: with a feijoa, an out-of-focus coffee, and an arty leaning shot chanelling Donna Hay.


Perhaps we tried a little too hard.


Our taste-tester screwed up her face. It was no good.* We have been terminally spoiled and cannot settle for cake made in five minutes.

The Crumble Experiment fared somewhat better.


If you are bold-of-heart and think you’ll fare better than we did, you can find the 5 min choc cake recipe at a Google search engine near you.


*In fact, it tasted disconcertingly like salad. Although this was possibly due less to the recipe and more to the fact that we used olive oil decanted from a separated vinaigrette when there was none other handy.

6 comments:

sophie said...

OH. Andrea. Where are you? Making Penguins cakes, no doubt.

Natalie Hatch said...

Perhaps using butter heated first rather than salad oil, you can include a tablespoon of raspberry jam which will help make your cake moist.

celine said...

You used salad oil?
*blank stare*
I repeat. Salad oil?

The Alien Onions said...

Celine - I know it sounds CRAZY. But the recipe called for olive oil, and the only olive oil in the House of Onion had previously been in a relationship with balsamic vineagar. But it was now amicably seperated and we thought it was worth the risk for CHOCOLATE CAKE.

Natalie - Yes, we had the same thought about melted butter (after the fact *sigh*), and rasberry jam is a good idea!


Susannah

thaliak said...

Ah... Onions.
Finally a post that covers my kind of cake recipe (hanging head in shame).

You might like my favourite (read: easy) apple cake recipe:

2 apples, sliced into cake tin.

Mix 3 eggs, 1 cup SR flour and 1 cup caster sugar.

pour over apples and bake at 180.

If you're feeling a bit ooh-la-la-fancy, then dust with sugar and cinammon.

Among Amid While said...

My son Harry has made that 5min choc cake-in-a-mug twice with unadulterated oil, and I have tasted it, and it's perfectly palatable, if a bit rubbery in texture as all microwave cakes are. This is easily disguised by using a huge mug and topping up the hot cake with vanilla ice cream.

Try again, with the ice cream, is my advice to you.

Margo.